Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Reds, Phillies, Rays & Mets

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

The Phillies are an easy target for the Internet and you’d expect the system to not be very strong, given the way the organization is characterized online.  The system isn’t great and the production from the draft hasn’t been very strong, which is a big reason why they recently hired a new scouting director.

It is worth pointing out that the Latin program is propping up the system right now, despite not having huge budgets, producing 6 of the top 16 prospects in the system.  Of the other ten, one is from a trade, eight were first or second round picks and the last one was a third round pick.  The Latin program run by Sal Agostinelli is propping up a system that only stands out right now because of two recent first round picks in Crawford and Nola.

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I’ve done plenty of rankings over the years for various outlets, but this new venture at FanGraphs is the first time I’ve gone through all 30 organizations to rank each team’s best talents. I’ve done some team prospect rankings in the past and the thing I experienced then — and heard about from people all over the industry — are the biases you have to wade through when club officials and scouts talk about their own players.

This is an obvious thing that even the most casual reader of prospect analysis would understand. The team wants to have the profile of their prospects boosted, both for their job security and for trade value. Nearly every source I talk to for these lists will reference a player from an earlier list in the series and ask a question about them, ask where I think their system stacks up so far in my research or ask my feelings about teams I haven’t written up yet. Most teams take the rankings from trusted publications and add them to their internal metrics, and they’re always checked for discrepancies or useful nuggets of information before trades are consummated. This isn’t just some fanboy nerd thing on the Internet. Well, it is that, but it isn’t only that.

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I’ll try to complete the FanGraphs analysis of the Josh Donaldson deal, with Dave covering the A’s perspective of the deal and Drew Fairservice covering it from the Jays perspective while I’ll jump in with the prospect end of things. Those two prior pieces do a good job analyzing the various angles of this deal, with the main question being what the next few moves are for Oakland, since they seem far from done shuffling their roster.

Dave’s piece made the points that the gap between Donaldson and Brett Lawrie may be smaller than 2013-2014 would lead you to believe, so if one of the prospects end up as a star or a piece that can be used in another deal, it could swing the balance of the deal toward Oakland.  There’s an expectation that Lawrie won’t match Donaldson’s production, hence the three minor leaguers included. While Lawrie will be the player watched most closely in 2015 from this deal, one exec I talked to last night said Franklin Barreto is the key to the deal, so let’s start with him.

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Yoan Moncada was declared a free agent by MLB on Saturday morning. I wrote in depth about his situation from almost every angle last Thursday and also wrote about when news broke that he had left Cuba last month. I sent out a number of tweets on Saturday explaining Moncada’s current situation. He still needs to be cleared by OFAC (a U.S. government agency) before teams can offer him a deal or sign him and the timetable for that happening is unclear.

Often, OFAC clearance happens before MLB clears a player, so that indicates it could happen quickly (weeks), but Moncada’s situation is pretty unusual, which most guess will slow the process down (months).  The reason that OFAC clearance timetables vary so much relative to MLB’s clearances is that OFAC clearance is a product of the government (which can be backlogged at times, have political interests to protect, etc.) working with the paperwork that the agent submits.  Moncada should be free to sign within a few months, well ahead of the June/July timeframe when the 2014 international signing period turns over to the 2015 period and a number of factors change.

I said I covered this from almost every angle last week, because there are three things I didn’t mention in my first two articles about Moncada that have recently come to my attention.  The first is all the unsubstantiated chatter and rumors about how Moncada leaving Cuba played out.  I didn’t go into detail on this because I’m still working to get some things confirmed to help fill in these blanks, but the rumors are picking up.  I still have international scouts asking me for any information I have on this topic, specifically the stuff I haven’t written, because teams are getting heavy into their due diligence.  I don’t have anything else to report right now, but I can guarantee you that between now and when Moncada finishes his first pro season, this story will eventually become less confusing, as we learned with Yasiel Puig’s defection.

The second thing I didn’t note was pointed out Friday by Ben Badler.  As I’ve also noted in a recent article on the topic, while teams can’t technically negotiate with players before the July 2nd signing period opens, it’s now commonplace with MLB’s three-year-old rules for teams to have deals done with players 9-12 months before they’re eligible to sign.  This happened before the rule changes, but rarely; more often, early deals for high profile players were done about 3-6 months in advance.  This is a response to soft caps on spending being in place (which most team treat as hard caps); if you can only spend so much money, the best way to find bargains is to offer security to players via a verbal deal even earlier in the process.

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Reds & Phillies

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

If you asked me before I started making calls on the Reds what I expected from their system, I would’ve said average to a bit below.  I was surprised to find they have at least average depth and a surprising amount of high end talent; they have an above-average eight 50+ FV players and three more that could’ve been in that group.  While there isn’t a slam-dunk, top-20 overall prospect in the bunch, this is an impressive group, buoyed by aggressive international signings and an instinct to look for talent in unusual places in the draft.

One of those tendencies is going after athletic relievers with three pitches and making them into starters.  This approach failed nominally with Aroldis Chapman, but he’s obviously worked out pretty well.  Iglesias, Lorenzen and Howard were all signed in the last 12 months with little to no starting experience and all have the chance to turn into mid-rotation starters.  A fringe benefit of having two athletic, legitimate hitting prospects that are top pitching prospects in an NL organization is that they should be above average hitters (among pitchers) if they become big league starters.

After trades to acquire Mat Latos, Sean Marshall, Jonathan Broxton and Shin-Soo Choo depleted the system, Reds execs feel like the cupboard is full once again, with much of the top minor league talent in the upper levels.  Due to this and a big group of experienced 20-something big league contributors (Devin Mesoraco, Jay Bruce, Homer Bailey, Todd Frazier, Mike Leake, Chapman, Latos), the MLB growth assets list is shorter than most and includes an interesting case in Negron.

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I wrote about 19-year-old Cuban infielder Yoan Moncada last month, but enough has happened since then that it’s time for an update. Yesterday, he had his first open workout since leaving Cuba, with scouts gathering for the spectacle in Guatemala City. About 100 scouts were there, with nearly every team represented and most rolling a few deep with heavy hitters: special assistants, VPs and directors of scouting.  Before I get to the talent, interested teams and potential bonus, I’m going to take a step back and let you guys know how weird this situation already has become.

An Unprecedented Background

I was told by Moncada’s agent last week that he was allowed by the Cuban government to leave the country, that Moncada has a Cuban passport and can fly back to the country whenever he wants to.  I haven’t been able to formally confirm this, but there’s no reason for the agent to lie about it, and multiple high ranking club executives told me this is how they understand the situation at this point as well.

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox & Reds

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

The White Sox system is better than in recent years, definitely helped by the addition of 2014 #3 overall pick LHP Carlos Rodon, only the White Sox second top 10 overall pick since 1990.  The White Sox mixed drafting history has ticked up recently, with their top two picks in their last two drafts (Rodon, Adams, Anderson, Danish) all showing up on this list with 50+ FVs (no small feat), joined by a power arm acquired from the Red Sox in one of the few White Sox dump trades in recent years.

Chicago’s system isn’t exceptionally deep, but recent solid drafts and an increased presence in Latin America have helped the system, along with an increased focus on young players.  Jose Abreu, Chris Sale, Adam Eaton and Jose Quintana didn’t qualify for the MLB growth assets list, but that’s two stars and two above average everyday players, all in their control years that were acquired for below market prices.  Combine that with an improved farm, the upper tier of which is mostly at the upper levels, and that gives White Sox fans some hope that, with another step forward from the big league team, success could be sustained for awhile.

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I’ve said it before but could stand to say it again: prospect rankings don’t have a long shelf life.  Usually, players ranked in the offseason don’t change much over that offseason, or at least we don’t have a chance to see any changes since they normally aren’t playing organized ball.  Every now and then a player with limited information (like a Cuban defector that signed late in the season) will go to a winter league and we’ll learn more, but most times, players look mostly the same in the fall/winter leagues, or more often a tired version of themselves.

This means that updating prospect rankings before we have a nice sample of regular season games to judge by (say, late April), seems pretty foolish.  The two mitigating factors in the case of my rankings is that I started ranking players before instructional league and the Arizona Fall League started and I also did draft rankings, which are constantly in flux.

I was on the road 17 of the last 18 days, seeing July 2nd prospects (recap here), draft prospects and minor league prospects.  I’ll take this chance to provide some updates to my draft rankings from September and below that, some players that looked to have improved at the AFL, particularly those from clubs whose prospects I’ve already ranked.

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